Data centric mobile devices and applications are putting capacity constraints on cellular and wireless local area network (WLAN) communication systems as more users move to these higher data rate devices. The growth of video file sharing is increasing the data rate requirements for both uplink and downlink in the cellular and WLAN environment. As a result, new optimization techniques are required to load balance the communication network to maintain system capacity and reduce the need of adding additional base terminals.
Current and future cellular communication systems will require higher performance from the antenna systems on the mobile or user end to improve system capacity and optimize load balance across the base terminals or nodes. As new generations of handsets, gateways, and other wireless communication devices become embedded with more applications and the need for bandwidth becomes greater, new antenna systems will be required to optimize link quality over larger bandwidths. Specifically, better control of the radiated field from the antenna system on the mobile side of the communication link will be required to provide better communication link quality for an antenna system tasked to cover multiple frequency bands. Control and optimization of radiated performance of subscriber devices in the cellular system can be implemented to load balance the existing networks.
As more subscribers migrate to higher data rate applications and devices, there will be a greater need to dynamically adjust uplink and downlink radiated performance per subscriber per cell in a network. Antenna beam steering techniques are well known and utilized on the base terminal side of the cellular communication link, but are currently missing from the mobile side primarily due to size constraints of the devices in use. For example, current cell phones, smart phones, and tablet devices are not large enough nor have the internal volume available to support multi-element antenna arrays needed to effectuate traditional beam steering techniques.